Lesson 1: Avoiding Potential Pitfalls

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Lesson objectives

Upon completing this lesson, you should be able to:

• Recognize and avoid common pitfalls in locating openly licensed resources

Caveat Emptor

Open educational resources, just like other web resources, can sometimes be confusing or poorly organized. Below, we'll describe a few common issues you should be aware of when you're looking for resources.

Most of these concepts can be reduced down to this: make sure the resource is actually openly licensed.

Caution #1: Some OER Are Not Free

There is some disagreement over whether or not OER needs to be free, or just openly licensed. This may not be something you need to worry about! Many - perhaps most - OER are free. Furthermore, if neither you nor your school can afford to pay for course materials, you can reject any OER that do have a monetary cost.

However, if your circumstances allow you to look at OER that have a financial cost, a good rule of thumb is to consider whether or not that cost provides value outside of the actual content.

Example #1. Curriki is a curator of open K-12 content. One of the services they offer is custom curation. Their site mentions a few different situations where this kind of curation might be helpful. Here's one of the situations they describe:

Schools currently transitioning to the Common Core State Standards will benefit from Curriki’s team of experts. We will source high-quality, Open Educational Resources for Districts and teachers, and then embed those resources (links to the resources housed on Curriki) into their own district pacing guides, scope and sequence docs, and instructional guides. [1]

This service is not something that is required for student success - but it might be very helpful to administration, instructors, and/or students.

Example #2. OpenStax is a publisher of openly licensed, college level textbooks. These textbooks are available in digital format at no cost to students. However, students can purchase a print copy of these texts. Having a print copy would provide value to some students, so this would be an acceptable cost.

OpenStax also partners with a number of companies to offer additional services at a low cost. Again, these services are not required for a student to succeed, but they may be of interest to instructors and schools. See the Technology section of the College Physics textbook to see some of these partnerships, and what kind of value they might add to student learning.

Caution #2: Openwashing

As you're probably aware, open educational resources are a hot topic these days. If a company or organization implies that they are open, but their materials aren't openly licensed, this is considered "openwashing." [2]

Example #1. OpenEd might be perceived to be related to open educational resources, for a number of reasons:

1. Its name.
2. The site's about page notes that the founder, Adam Blum, "created a prototype that aggregated resources from all leading OERs and accurately aligned them to popular learning goals such as the Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards." [3]
3. The site's terms of service mention an open license agreement, in point #4. [4]

When one looks at an individual resource on this site, however, there is no license information on the page other than a copyright symbol in the bottom right hand corner of the page.

Compare:

• Tutoring Reading: Use pictures to help you read
• Reading picture books

Which of these sources is openly licensed? What license does that source use?

Caution #3: Confusing Website Navigation

Sometimes, it can be hard to know for sure if a resource is openly licensed. Sometimes website navigation is unclear, and sometimes websites have both open and "closed" content. Unfortunately, there isn't consistency in how things are labeled - sometimes web sites have a Creative Commons license applied to the whole site, while others assign licenses to individual pieces of content.

Example #1. A professor received an email that about Cengage's OpenNow product. He clicked on Search Products, and found a text that met his needs. However, Cengage has many products which are not openly licensed, and the search tool included this content. The text he found was not open.

Example #2. Hippocampus is a well-known source in the OER community. However, not everything in it is openly licensed.

Compare:

• Evolution of Behavior (STEMbite)
• Introduction to Evolution and Natural Selection (Khan Academy)

Which of these sources is openly licensed? What license does that source use?

Caution #4: OER can cite non-open material

Some OER require you to have access to another resource - which is not open.

Example #1. EngageNY offers a number of openly licensed resources which are aligned to NY state standards. These EngageNY resources for a Grade 4 ELA unit are, in themselves, openly licensed. However, the module focuses on a historical novel, The Hope Chest by Karen Schwabach. This novel is not openly licensed.

Example #2. MIT's Open Courseware is an impressive effort by MIT to put all of its course materials online under an open license. This course on linear algebra is open, but the syllabus mentions a non-open textbook, which students would likely need to borrow, rent or purchase in order to succeed in the course.

It is good practice to see if an OER refers to materials that are not openly licensed. If you find non-open materials mentioned, you have a few options:

• Look for an openly licensed alternative
• Determine whether your school's library has access to the non-open materials
• Work with a librarian to see if the library has alternatives that would meet your needs

Ready to move on?

Yes! Take me to Lesson 2!

References & Resources

[1] Curriki. (n.d.) Custom Curation. Retrieved from http://www.curriki.org/custom-curation/

[2] Thorne, Michelle. (2009, March 14). Openwashing [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://michellethorne.cc/2009/03/openwashing/

[3] OpenEd. (n.d.) About OpenEd. Retrieved from http://about.opened.com/

[4] OpenEd. (n.d.) Terms of Use. Retrieved from http://about.opened.com/terms-of-service/

 

This mini-course was created by Laura Harris. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.